se at hand
would be the stores of lint, bandages, towels, basins, and all the
paraphernalia which science and long experience had devised. These
diminished, in some measure, the horrors of the battle for at least
the wounded. It was a sublime and beautiful sight, as compared with
the wars of even a century ago, when the surgeon had scarcely a
recognized position in the army. In the very midst of the hell of fire
and flame and noise, the relief parties, with their stretchers, would
go out and return with their burdens. Soon the neighborhood of the
surgeon's wagon looked like a harvest-field with the windrows of cut
grain upon it. Strange as it may seem, there was often more real
danger in this going and coming from rear to front, and from front to
rear, than on the very battle line itself. Many a man preferred to
stand in the fighting files with the excitement and glory, than to get
out into the uncertain regions of wandering balls and bursting shells.
The Carletons, both uncle and nephew, had often, while out
collecting news, to scud from cover to cover, and amid the "zip, zip"
of bullets. Dangerous as the service was, there was little reward to
the eyesight, for the Confederate army, like the Japanese dragon of
art, was to be seen only in bits, here and there.

How easy for us now, in the leisure of abundant time and with all the
fresh light that science has shed upon surgery, and focussed upon the
subject of gunshot wounds, to criticise the surgeons of that day, who,
with hundreds of men each awaiting in agony his turn, were obliged to
decide within minutes, yea, even seconds, upon a serious operation,
without previous preparation or reinforcement of the patient. The
amputation, the incision, the probing had to be done then and there,
on the instant. It is even wonderful that the surgeons did as well as
they did. Often it was a matter of quick decision as to whether
anything should be attempted. One look at many a case was enough to
decide that death was too near. Often the man died in the stretcher;
sometimes, when marked for the operating-table, he was asleep in his
last sleep before his turn came. Surgeons, hospital stewards, nurses,
detailed men, had to concentrate into moments what in ordinary
hospital routine may require hours.

Human nature was reduced to its lowest terms when hunger made the
possessors of a stomach forget whether they were men or wolves. The
heat was so intense, the marching so severe, that